KIRKUS REVIEW

A kidnapping survivor–turned-vigilante tries to save another young woman while the
police do everything they can to save them both.

Flora Dane might look unscathed but she’s permanently scarred
from having been abducted while on spring break in Florida seven years earlier
by Jacob Ness, a sadistic trucker who held her captive for 472 days, keeping
her in a coffin for much of the time when he wasn't forcing her to have sex
with him. Now back in Boston and schooled in self-defense, Flora is obsessed
with kidnapped girls and the nature of survival, a topic she touches on a bit
more than necessary in the many flashbacks to her time in captivity. Gardner (Crash
& Burn, 2015, etc.) must walk a fine line in accurately evoking the
horrors of Flora’s past ordeals without slipping into excessive descriptions of
violence; she is not entirely successful. When Flora thwarts another kidnapping
attempt by killing Devon Goulding, her would-be abductor, Gardner regular Sgt.
Detective D.D. Warren’s interest is piqued even though she’s meant to be on
restricted duty. Then Flora disappears for real, and Warren, along with Dr.
Samuel Keynes, the FBI victim specialist from Flora's original kidnapping, fears
it’s related to the kidnapping three months earlier of Stacey Summers, a case
Flora followed closely. Gardner alternates between Warren’s investigation into
Flora’s disappearance and Flora’s present-day hell at the hands of a new enemy,
but the implausibility of the sheer number of kidnappings, among other things,
strains credulity.

A gritty, complicated heroine like Flora Dane deserves a better
plot than this needlessly complicated story.

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